I'm looking for the fastest way to get to the Eye of the North region with a new character. I have the Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall campaigns on my account. But since I only played PvP characters I have no clue which of the three offers the fastest way. Preferably only using the NPC companions.

1 Answer
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I'm going to go on the assumption you want the access to the Hall of Monuments for your Guild Wars 2 playthrough. In this case, your best bet would be to start a PvE character in Factions or Nightfall, if you want to do it through normal play. However, there's a few things you may want to consider, depending on what you plan to do.

For reference's sake, you can get there by talking to the following characters. You must be at least level 10 in order to accept any of these quests:

Considering how slow Prophecies plays in regards to leveling curve and mission pacing, this isn't an ideal choice at all really. You could pay to have someone run you to Lion's Arch, but you may not be level 10 by the time you get there. As I've never done the run myself, I'm unsure. However, Prophecies has the easiest obtainable weapons for the HoM because of Oppressor weapons, the requirements for which are less work and cheaper than Tormented and Destroyer weapons.

Factions' leveling curve to 20 is the fastest. Even without taking the sidequests on Shing Jea Island into consideration, you should be a good chunk of the way to level 20 by the time you finish the missions there and travel to Kaineng City. Factions also has the shortest campaign, so you could finish that out for some easy points for your HoM, in addition to 2 of the unique pets you need for the Monument of Fellowship, the Black Moa and the Phoenix.

However, Nightfall lets you receive a bunch of heroes (Koss, Dunkoro, Melonni, Tahlkora, and Acolyte Jin/Acolyte Sousuke) pretty early, which will make completing more of the PvE content easier, if that's your plan. In addition, the Nightfall campaign itself has the most points to offer because of Vabbian armor, Tormented weapons, and the most heroes.

Based on these factors and depending on your long-term goals, I'd say it's a toss-up between Factions and Nightfall. If you just want to just level up to get straight to EotN and don't care about the Nightfall heroes, go Factions (as you do still get Vekk, Gwen and Ogden in EotN), but if you want to have more heroes for PvE play, start in Nightfall.

Pretty thorough answer (+1), except for one important detail: if you start in Factions, get to Kaineng (by which time you should be around level 10), do Sunspears in Cantha to get to Kamadan, then the follow-up quest will unlock Koss, Dunkoro, Melonni, and Tahlkora (Jin/Sousuke are also available via the normal quest). Hence, even if you're after these Nightfall heroes, Factions is still the quicker route to EotN; in fact, the rewards for getting these heroes and then getting to EotN should see you well on your way to level 20.
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Amos M. CarpenterMay 5 '13 at 14:02